Why learn to manually beatmatch?

if you can’t beatmatch you can’t do change overs… It’s also more fun to beatmatch as syncing is too boring imo

yeah there are loads of reasons really… the main one being you arrive at a club and the dj before you is mixing on cdjs..how you going to mix into his track?

I am a big believer that every DJ should know how to beat match. All the reasons above more than validate why. What you gonna do when something went wrong with your beat grid or BPM count? The sync won’t function correctly so you’ll have to mix the tracks manually. Many accomplished or “big” (respectable) DJs may not beat match any longer but I’ll bet you they all know how to.

Even though I love the sync button, manual beat matching still matters.:

1. Beatgrids aren’t perfect, so learning how to adjust when things go wrong is a big plus.
2. Not all dance music matches a beat grid.
3. In the end you have to use your ears, manual beat matching really develops your ears to hear the finer points of phrasing and timing.

#3 is the least technical. But I think it’s the most important. There’s no substitute for a DJ with a good rhythmic sense, slapping on the sync button won’t get you there.

Beatmatching is one of the most important skills of DJing. It’s supposed to be done by ears and not your eyes…

I’ll quote part of a blog entry I wrote…

http://www.d-jam.com/thoughts/2012/04/01/the-great-debate-sync

BUT…you should still know how to manually beatmatch

Surprise! You didn’t think this would be a 100% support of the sync. Oh no. Forget what others tell you on “cheating” and such. As a DJ you should still know how to manually beatmatch songs simply because sync isn’t fullproof and perfect.

Remember that one night I mentioned where I first used sync? That very night I had sync fail on me a few times. One problem is that in Torq, you can set up a BPM range when it scans tunes. For me, I had mine at 60-160 BPM. I pulled out some tunes and saw their BPM read as 63.0 or 62.5…and these were house tunes. What happened was the scan ended up putting the beat grid on every other beat, so when I tried sync, the song came in very fast.

When I made those mixes I posted using sync, I often times had at least one blend I had to do manually, and often times I had to recalibrate the beat grids. So I mix in, and at some point I stop the tune, recalibrate, mix it out into the next tune, and then had to piece all these recorded parts together in Sound Forge.

The big problem is that sync will mathematically determine the beat. So it’ll scan the tune, see the usual pattern, and then lay the grid on it based on the first 1/4 of the song. What if the tempo slows down during the tune, and then speeds back up? What if the producer puts an extra four beats as a lead-in to get out of the breakdown? These factors will make sync fail for a DJ who relies on it.

I remember back in that gig at SubClub in Slovakia, I was put in front of a laptop with Virtual DJ on it. No decks, no controller. So I was on my own to make it work. Like I did in that other gig, I used the sync, but I do remember when I tried to mix in French Kiss by Lil Louis, it wouldn’t work…so I just went manually and made it work using the pitch bend controls. Even the slowing down of the song through its infamous sexual breakdown will mess up the beatgrid, thus you have to go manual to mix out of the tune when it speeds back up.

As a DJ, you have to make it happen. You can’t just decide to not play certain tracks or allow bad blends because you’re unwilling to be able to handle any situation. What if your dog knocks over a beer on your laptop at home? You can’t just call the promoter and tell him you can’t play. You have to make it work, even if it means showing up with a book of CDs and using the club’s equipment. If you want to be seen as a professional, then you can’t have excuses, or else you won’t get booked again.